Darkness at Noon
Ratings27
Average rating4
15
Ratings27
Average rating4
**Darkness at Noon** (German: *Sonnenfinsternis*) is a novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he helped to create.
The novel is set in 1939 during the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. Despite being based on real events, the novel does not name either Russia or the Soviets, and tends to use generic terms to describe people and organizations: for example the Soviet government is referred to as "the Party" and Nazi Germany is referred to as "the Dictatorship". Joseph Stalin is represented by "Number One", a menacing dictator. The novel expresses the author's disillusionment with the Bolshevik ideology of the Soviet Union at the outset of World War II.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Darkness at Noon number eight on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, even though Koestler wrote it in German.
(Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness_at_Noon))
Reviews with the most likes.
My favorite book this year and one of the best I've ever read. Perhaps it had a more powerful effect on me since I spent several months in the archives in China reading the reports of the Communist treason elimination bureau, but this work brilliantly captures the essence of the mad logic of a Communist purge.
Tony Judt has a great essay about Arthur Koestler and his importance found as the first chapter in part one, in his collection “Reappraisals” which I found very informative.
Getting the bad out of the way, I think the prose could have been sharpened a bit. Of all my recently read books, I am probably holding up Gatsby as the gold standard in command of language. Darkness at Noon falls short of that, so I cannot rate it 5/5.
However, it touches on important themes, and, along with Siddhartha, Things Fall Apart, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, it has made me think a lot about death, its meaning, and how one ought to live his life with the concrete understanding that one day he will, too, grow old and feeble, then cease to exist.
The novel is also an interesting peek into a certain period of Soviet and antebellum history. Remarkable that such control could be exercised over a people, and the philosophy underpinning it all that the ends absolutely justify the means, and that the winner decides ex post facto what the truth is.
If you enjoy Orwell and For Whom the Bell Tolls, you will enjoy Darkness at Noon.
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